Higher-education officials often mention the nation’s changing demographic makeup as one challenge colleges face. But that concern usually comes in the middle of a long list of problems, far below issues like declining state and federal dollars. And mentions usually amount to vague references to the growing number of minority, low-income, and first-generation students enrolling in college, or to the amount of assistance they need to complete their degrees.
The changing makeup of the student population, though, was in sharp focus during last week’s meeting of the State Higher Education Executive Officers. Also discussed at length were some efforts underway to deal with those changes.
Even as policy makers recognize the significance of demographic change, conferencegoers said, few are making the hard choices necessary to meet the needs of current students, let alone future ones.
The title of a report presented by Lindsey E. Malcom-Piqueux, an assistant professor of higher-education administration at George Washington University, spelled out the theme: “America’s Unmet Promise: The Imperative for Equity in Higher Education.” The report, which was written by Ms. Malcom-Piqueux and several co-authors and was published by the Association of American Colleges and Universities, argues that colleges need to try to move beyond diversifying the student body and instead seek to achieve broader equity in educational offerings.
It’s Over for Anglos
The sense of urgency at this year’s conference reflected basic facts: The potential college students of the future will be mostly Hispanic, and a growing number of them will require academic and financial assistance.
Steve H. Murdock, a demographer and professor of sociology at Rice University, laid out the enormous scope of the country’s ethnic shift during a fast-paced presentation dense with charts and numbers. The average age of white Americans is rising, and the birth rate falling, Mr. Murdock explained, while nearly all of the country’s population growth is coming from Hispanic families.
At the same time, the earnings of most of the country’s workers have declined over the past decade, even as the price of college has increased, said Sara Goldrick-Rab, a professor of educational-policy studies and sociology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
A college degree is considered a ticket to the middle class, she said, yet it is still difficult for students in low-income families to afford to get into college and stay there long enough to earn a degree. “Poor people are running in place,” she said.
In the meantime, she added, wealthier students who are less academically inclined have a far greater chance of completing college than do poor students who perform well in school. “We have to worry about what happens when academically talented students from low-income families can’t afford college,” Ms. Goldrick-Rab said.
Too Little, Too Late
None of that information is new to anyone in higher education. But what was on display at the state-policy conference was a recognition, and even some frustration, that efforts to deal with inequity have largely fallen short, undermined by a lack of financial support and the kind of institutional self-preservation that pushes colleges to pursue rankings and prestige.
At one session, half a dozen students from the University of Southern California — most of whom grew up in neighborhoods around Los Angeles plagued by poverty, drug abuse, and violence — discussed the institution’s mentoring program and the support they have received to help them succeed despite the social and financial barriers they faced.
George Sanchez, vice dean for diversity and strategic initiatives at USC’s Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences, mentored the students as part of a special program. But faculty members at many colleges, including USC, say they find it hard to spend time mentoring because it is not built into their workload, Mr. Sanchez said.
Raymund Paredes, Texas’ commissioner of higher education, said such programs were simply too small to have a broad impact. “Mentoring programs are for a tiny portion of the students at those institutions,” he said at a different session, on state tuition policy. “The level of mentoring for programs like the one at USC is rare.”
Another session, on higher education’s “civic and moral responsibility to foster communities of success and tolerance,” highlighted apprenticeships provided by the “Earn and Learn” program at Tulane University’s Cowen Institute for Public Education Initiatives. The program offers young people, ages 16 to 24, an opportunity to work 20 hours a week on Tulane’s campus while attending 20 hours of classes at nearby Delgado Community College.
Dwaun J. Warmack, president of Harris-Stowe State University, a historically black college in St. Louis, said such programs were nice to have but limited in their scope and unable to deal with systemic issues of inequity.
“We’re putting Band-Aids on gunshot wounds,” said Mr. Warmack, whose college enrolls nearly half of its students from Ferguson, Mo., where the black teenager Michael Brown was killed by a white police officer a year ago, sparking national protests.
Putting Money in the Right Places
For many at the conference, though, the core issue was not only a lack of money to support efforts to build equity. It was also how that money is distributed.
Patrick Kelly, a researcher at the National Center of Higher Education Management Systems, echoed others in pointing out that the lion’s share of state appropriations go to the institutions with the fewest disadvantaged students.
“How do we get the guts to redistribute money to help low-income students?” Mr. Kelly asked during a session on college affordability.
For Mr. Paredes, colleges also bear part of the responsibility to use the money they get more efficiently and effectively. “We simply have to rethink higher education,” he said. “There is no institution that’s more unlikely to embrace disruptive innovation than a college or university.”
Too many colleges have driven up their own costs by pursuing the prestige of college rankings and research, he said, becoming more selective and focusing their financial-aid programs’ dollars on merit scholarships rather than need.
“You never hear a university say they want to be the top institution in the country for graduating poor students,” Mr. Paredes said.
Eric Kelderman writes about money and accountability in higher education, including such areas as state policy, accreditation, and legal affairs. You can find him on Twitter @etkeld, or email him at eric.kelderman@chronicle.com.
